


This Year's Prairie King

by B N Prompte (RumpelstiltskinIX)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bigotry & Prejudice, Dark Comedy, Dubious Consent, Dubious Ethics, Dubiously Consensual Blow Jobs, Explicit Sexual Content, Exploitation, Gritty, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Character of Color, LGBTQ Themes, Literature, M/M, Native American Character(s), Racism, Racist Language, Realistic, Social Commentary, Social Issues, White Privilege
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 04:53:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14181126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RumpelstiltskinIX/pseuds/B%20N%20Prompte
Summary: Treat it like it's real life.





	This Year's Prairie King

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [This Year's Prom King](https://archiveofourown.org/works/788069) by [ladysisyphus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladysisyphus/pseuds/ladysisyphus). 



He never shuts up.

It was the first thing I noticed about him. Hell, the first thing I noticed _was_ him. I beat the odds, get accepted into college, hope my brother Jared finally figures out how to use the fucking microwave… and the first white guy droning on at me isn’t even a professor.

“… and my sister Alyssa was so shocked I passed history, I couldn’t tell if she was gonna cry or throw something!”

I pulled my face into the most neutral yet excruciatingly bored expression I could muster. I would learn this only encouraged him.

“So,” he finally asked, breathless from recounting his entire high school history condensed into twenty minutes.

His voice filled the gap where a late professor was supposed to stand.

“What are you majoring in?”

“Journalism,” I answered, surprised there was space for four entire syllables.

“Journalism!” he exclaimed, confirming that it was filtration rather than density that prevented anything of substance coming out. “Man, I hate writing. I just got out of high school. Why would I want to go do _more_ writing when I just got that hell done with?”

He’d punctuated it with a laugh, and I remember showing my teeth in response.

He thought I was smiling.

***

Courtesy of a girl paid too little to give a shit, my roommate and I were drinking wine slushies in the bleachers the next time I saw Alyssa’s brother.

“Ugh, look at those idiots,” my roommate said, mashing his ice twice as much as his molars.

“If they fuck themselves up, Jake,” I offered, “it’s experience in medical transcription.”

Jake snorted and scooped slushed wine awkwardly into (well, onto) his mouth.

“I thought you were gonna be a news caster,” Jake said.

“Journalist,” I corrected. “You have to cut your hair to get on TV and live.”

Jake stared at me for a long moment. There I’d gone, making things awkward again.

“If you had to fuck one,” I said, “which would you choose?”

Jake gawped at that. Who said I was one to backtrack?

“Like, gun to the head or else?” Jake finally said.

“Sure,” I answered, folding my arms behind my head and watching him from the corner of my eyes.

“Uh… damn,” Jake said, resting his arms on his thighs and drink on one knee. “That’s a tough one.”

“Seventy-four's like fucking a radio,” I said, “so consider him off the menu.”

Jake gave me a befuddled look, but went back to surveying the football players.

“I guess fifty-eight looks like he could be my ex’s brother?” Jake says uncertainly. “What about you?”

Jake looked at me like he’d just gotten me with the ultimate one-up question. I look back at him with the blandest expression I can muster.

“The radio.”

I said it for the absurdity of it.

Unfortunately, absurdity was the perfect lubrication for late-teen fantasies.

***

I’m still not sure if my mother had a drinking problem. I just know that one day, I came home and saw her rocking chair empty. A neighbor who’d seen said she’d fought with a cop and gotten arrested. Never saw her toss back more than beer personally, but the officer said she was publicly intoxicated and that was that.

She never made it out of prison.

There was a funeral about every year on the Native side of my family. Didn’t strike me as odd until after I ended up with my white biodad’s grandparents. Either they’re really good at secrets, or no one on that side’s died in six whole years.

Maybe my big breakthrough will be revealing modern vampire enclaves. I’m part vampire, after all. Fuck if anyone knows the blood quantum of _that_.

I’m at a party, thinking about my mother of all things. It’s weird how being surrounded by people can make you feel so alone.

“C’mon,” Jake says, brandishing a red plastic cup of fuck knows what. “You’ve barely had anything.”

Wine was one thing. I wasn’t entirely convinced the only thing in those cups was alcohol.

“Intoxicated people can’t consent,” I answered.

Jake gave me a wide, bleary-eyed grin. I smiled tightly back. I hadn’t expected that excuse to go over so well. The most intimate moments I had claim to involved paper towels or a toilet bowl.

“Hey, look,” Jake said, pushing my shoulder to turn me.

I ended up glaring over my shoulder at him instead.

“Radio’s here,” he drawled, jerking his head in the other direction.

“Radio?” I repeated with feigned obliviousness, stone cold sober enough to both remember jerking off to ‘Radio’ and keep my mouth shut at the same time.

‘Radio’ was looking at me when I finally found him in the crowd, and I crinkled my nose.

I would later learn nose-crinkling was a mating ritual for his people.

“Hey,” Jake laughed, dopey. “He’s a fag, too!”

It was only in hindsight that I realized _I_ wasn’t the slow one.

My mouth opened and closed, finally settling on a speechless frown. Slamming ass involves all sorts of preparation, but this was one such situation that I’d come unprepared for.

Eye contact and a bad joke was enough for Jake to decide I’d bang a guy. Eye contact alone seemed to be all Radio needed to get sucked into this.

“Heey,” Radio said as soon as he was in shouting distance.

I uneasily noticed that Jake looked eager to speak. Lightning must have struck and reformed him next to me: as soon as I turned my head back, he was right beside us.

“We met at the, uh,” Radio started, a cup in hand, “intro-thingy, right?”

“Riiight,” I answered slowly.

“I’m Mark,” he said, reaching for my hand with his full hand first.

He sloshed some clearish drink down the front of my shirt. I looked down, silently appreciated my stain-free taste in mostly black clothes, and frowned at him.

“Hey, Mark!” Jake jumped in. “Eric wants to fuck you.”

I scanned for the nearest exit. Mark was looking at me with furrowed brows.

“Don’t think I got your name,” Mark said.

“It’s John,” I lied.

Mark blinked and looked back to Jake, who had turned to try and dance with (at?) a group of girls behind him.

“Who’s Eric?” he asked me.

I just shrugged. Mark looked harmless, but that could change faster than the weather.

I eyed the pretzel table, and then the couple making out in front of it. Oh, the things a college kid did for free food.

***

Later that week, I’d found myself browsing the college job board. I pressed my finger into the cork backing in an empty space, drumming idly. Most of them were kids offering services rather than seeking, but a sloppily scrawled note buried under self-promotions did still catch my eye.

“WANTED,” it read. “HELP W ESPANOLL”

Looked like a hopeless case, but I was hungry. I texted the number and went about my night. It was after midnight when my phone woke me up from a dead sleep.

 **Unknown Number:** omfg i need ur help asap

I stared, bleary eyed, squinting at the dots as Bad at Language typed.

 **Unknown Number:** forgot 2 do span homework n i need 2 grad

Oh. That one.

I Googled the rate of college essays, then doubled it in my mind and texted them.

 **Eric Langley:** $70/hr + $100 late fee

I rubbed my eyes, stretched, and then laid back down to go to sleep. Just as I was drifting off, the text alert went off again.

“Eric!” Jared snapped across the room. “Could you turn that fucking thing off?”

“Sorry,” I grumbled.

I looked at the phone, then rubbed my eyes in disbelief.

 **Unknown Number:** k

A moment later, they texted an address.

I flirted with the idea of adding a travel fee, but decided to walk the two miles instead.

 **Eric Langley:** Be there in 30

***

I knocked uncertainly on the dorm door, checking my text and hoping they hadn’t typoed it.

 **Eric Langley:** I’m here

A moment later, I heard a stumbling, heavy approach. I briefly wondered if I should have snagged a knife from Jared’s switchblade collection, but it was a little late for that. I reassured myself that mass murderers were more common than serial killers in college, and that that generally happened _during_ class.

I looped my thumbs in my jeans and tried to stand tall, which wasn’t that hard at 5’10. I wasn’t a small guy, but I wasn’t the lone giant in a crowd, either.

The door opened. A shadow fell over me. It was Radio- uh, Mark. It was Mark, the guy who never shut up. Apparently never shutting up _wasn’t_ a good indicator of how proficient in the actual language a person might be.

His vanilla skin was flushed cherry across his cheeks, and he fell standing up against the door frame with a stupid laugh.

“Do you have the money?” I asked bluntly.

“Yeah, yeah,” he drawled, laughing.

“I’ll start as soon as I see it,” I said.

Mark blinked and frowned.

“A’ight, uh,” he said. “Gonna have to hit the ATM, then.”

Only my sobriety and lack of anal incontinence history kept me from shitting right then and there.

He was too drunk to accurately put in his own pin. (“1234,” by the way.)

I laughed. He laughed. I imagined siphoning out all his white boy money and fixing the leaking pipes in our apartment.

I figure my mom might have thought similar things while she was fucking my dad. Fat lot of good that did her. Found out he was married with kids and that ‘separated’ only counted for business trips. My stepdad was nice, but he never came back from Iraq.

Here I am, trying to make sure Jared doesn’t go dad’s route, and this prick is drinking his education away and throwing Bennies at strangers for _homework_.

I’m still not sure he knows how much a banana costs.

“So is that, uh,” Mark mumbled, staring vacantly at the ATM, “John, right?”

I said nothing, and I don't think he ever noticed.

“How much?” he said, rubbing his shrimp-red face.

I sized him up, trying not to show my teeth.

“Four hundred,” I told him with a straight face.

I spoke the words, and four bills shot out the slot.

Jared hasn’t complained about late night calls since.

***

You think I’d be grateful for easy money, right? I’d felt like I was getting such a good deal when I got what I asked for.

Easy money would be if he gave me the homework when he got it instead of anywhere between nine at night to seven the morning of. Easy money would be if he had the same course work and was just copying. Easy money would be if I didn’t have to entertain him while wracking my brain for a language I hadn’t touched since sophomore year.

“You’re really smart,” he said one night, surprised.

 _You’re not_ , I kept to myself, unsurprised.

“Hey,” he continued. “Can you speak Spanish to me?”

I pause in my typing and see my reflection scowling in the screen.

“That’ll cost extra,” I told him.

“But you’re like,” he said, searching for words.

That was odd. They tended to just spill out like a garbage truck unloading into a dump.

“You’re Hispanic, right?” he finally finished.

I raised one brown eyebrow. This is not the first time I’ve been sucked into this kind of conversation. Granted, it was the first time someone _asked_ me rather than launching slurs as guesses on the playground.

“Native,” I shrugged.

It feels wrong to say. I don’t even know what tribe my mother was – just that Grandma went to Indian School and we don’t talk about that.

“Oh!” he answered, like I just told him we’d gone to the same concert once. “Like, uh, like Squamo?”

“… What?” I asked.

With one word, grass grew and paint dried.

“Like, uh, that guy!” Mark launched back in. “The Indian that spoke English!”

My mouth was still closed, but just barely. Mark gestured widely, as though that could make the senseless make sense.

“You know, the Mayflower and Thanksgiving!” Mark says.

Squanto. I narrow my eyes and open my mouth-

“Are you related to him?” Mark said before I could get a word out.

“Dude!” I gritted out. “That whole tribe died because white people didn’t know how to wash their fucking foreskins back then!”

Mark opened his mouth. He said nothing. Somewhere in the world, someone won the lottery.

“You can wash your foreskin?”

Somewhere in the world, millions more did not.

***

Spanish homework turned into Spanish plus math. Every week I asked him for his homework so I could do it and still get some sleep. Every week he insisted he was going to do it this time, just to wake me up at some ungodly hour last minute again.

It’s been a year since I graduated, and I still regularly wake up to a text that’s not going off.

Sometimes his roommate was home, and those were my favorite nights. He was a white guy, I think. After all, one withering look from him was all it took to shut Mark up.

Those nights passed quickly. I got paid less, but I also chugged less Kool Aid wine. Jared was the ripe old age of thirteen and _really_ getting into brewing shit. I was worried until he started pressing wrinkled, folded ones, fives, tens, twenties, and loose change into my palm.

Then I was just ashamed.

It still beat Iraq.

Jared and I were sitting on the rooftop, chugging Kool Aid wine slushies as best we could. I’d overheard him telling his girlfriend one night that he froze what he wasn’t selling to slow me down. I hate that he gets stuck looking out for me because both his parents are dead and my sperm donor might as well be.

I hate how he thinks he’s stupid because teachers give him a harder time than his friends.

“So,” Jared said.

“So,” I said back, scraping wine with a spoon.

“Got a girlfriend?” he asked.

I shrugged.

“Boyfriend?” he asked.

I scoffed.

I never really was good at talking about myself. Journalism seemed like a good way to avoid that.

“Not into that?” he said, rotating his cup to loosen the frozen edges.

“Not into rejection,” I said. “And it takes a lot of rejection to get a little acceptance.”

Jared packed his slushy down with his spoon, carving weird shapes into it.

“Oh,” he said, then took a small spoonful. “Maybe you’re just ugly.”

“What!” I whooped, and shoved him on the shoulder.

We goofed around and managed to rush back inside before the cops turned the corner.

***

Maybe it was my brother getting luckier than me (at thirteen!). Maybe it was my roommate getting luckier than me (at eighteen!). Maybe it was my hand getting less lucky than either of them (at nineteen!).

I signed up for Grindr.

I have a strong build, but not in the more classically appreciated Herculean way. It’s weird. I dig men who look like me, but I recoil in the mirror.

I took a blurry picture of my bicep that had just about as much definition without the blur, and skimmed through the online profiles.

That’s how I found out Radio- ahem, _Mark,_ theoretically fucked men.

The story should have ended there, and in most cases would have. However, two major factors came into play: one, I had to see him on a regular basis; two, I was a horny fucking nineteen year old.

So, I snagged one of Jared’s condoms, left a quarter where it once was, and waited for the infuriating after-ten text.

It was five by the time Mark roped me into doing his homework that night.

The condom remained in my jacket pocket and I prayed for a text at fucking booty call hours.

It was a bad idea. It was a _terrible_ idea. Every time I talked myself back into it, he was drunk or high when I came over.

It was a text-in-the-morning night when he was finally sober enough for me to do something stupid. Half of me hoped he stopped hiring me after trying this, but we needed the money. Bad.

And, you know… I think I had to idealize him to keep stomaching his blatant disregard for me. I was someone to talk at rather than to. I was a service provider rather than a person. Later on, I learned I was also White Woke Cred for him when he insisted to a group of friends that ‘savage’ wasn’t a slur in front of me.

He stopped having the ‘decency’ to call before seven after I failed to fall in line with that.

Even after a steady diet of bullshit for months, I still had this weird desire to be his friend or something. I had this romantic notion that one day, he’d sober up and stop being such a dickwad and that maybe I’d see more of his amazement and wonder at little things than his gross entitlement.

And maybe he would. Just, not with me.

“Hey,” Mark said as I slogged through math drills. “Has anyone ever called you a prairie nig-”

My romantic notions evaporated in the face of reality.

“Blow me,” I snapped.

It shut him up for the rest of the night, but I could feel him staring even as I left.

***

For once, he texted me in the middle of the day.

 **Radio:** hey

I got the text, but had to bus to the city that day to stock up on necessities. Due to the irregularity of my town’s bus, it meant six hours minimum tied up in the city or commuting. I always end up forgetting something, even with a list.

 **Radio:** u want me 2 blow u

I damn near dropped the tin of sesame oil, and was lucky I had good reflexes.

 **Eric Langley:** What?

 **Radio:** do u want me 2 blow u

I was pretty certain it was a trick question. Mark could be on Grindr cruising for ass… or Mark could be on Grindr cruising for ‘fags’ to beat up.

Or both.

 **Eric Langley:** Yeah, sure.

Did Mark even know what sarcasm was? I figured that would be answered for me with a black eye or a blowjob.

I was right. I just wish I’d known the difference between lubed and non-lubed condoms before he ended up sputtering on it.

***

For a while, he actually called me in during afternoons since his roommate was in class.

I’d sit pushed back from the desk enough for an enormous football player to wedge himself between me and it, unzip my pants, give him a (non-lubricated) condom and occasionally mumble the Spanish to myself.

Afterward, he’d give me four hundred dollars and I’d try not to think too hard about what he was paying for.

Some weeks in, he gave the condom back to me and said he wanted to be ‘romantic’. I took that to mean we were entering exclusive territory. I wouldn’t feel right dating while having some sort of ‘friends with benefits’ thing on the side, and so I let it drift in that direction.

Until I saw him with his girlfriend.

It was a long four years. Let’s leave it at that.

**Author's Note:**

> This work was written shortly after I was suggested ladysisyphus' "This Year's Prom King" to read.
> 
> I am a Native, LGBT man, and I'm done with taking Hollywood rape culture at [red]face value.
> 
> This is a more realistic portrayal of how a similar relationship might have gone down.


End file.
